Hell's Horizon (11 page)

He cut himself short. I stood quivering, fearing for my future. After a few seconds of seething silence, he grinned wickedly. “Stop shaking. I’m not going to eat you.”

“Could I have that in writing, sir?”

His grin spread. “I like you, Al. We’ll get along fine if you don’t tell me what to do. I’ve never been one for taking orders, even in the form of polite suggestions. I
could
contact Paucar Wami and put the question to him myself. But I won’t. That would be cheating.”

“Cheating who, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Thee and me, Al. I promised you a chance to make a name for yourself. It wouldn’t be fair to deny you after you’ve made such an impressive start.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” I hastily interjected.

He laughed throatily. “I’d also be cheating myself out of a good show. It’s drama of this nature which renews my faith in life. Ordinary diversions bore me. Alcohol, drugs, books, gambling, women—all are wasted on me. Do you know what keeps me going, Al? People out of their depth. I thrive on it.”

“Some call that sadism.”

A potentially perilous answer but he dismissed the notion with a snort. “Sadists enjoy watching people suffer. I prefer to see people triumph, or at least put up a good fight as they go down. The thought of a confrontation between you and Paucar Wami fascinates me. If he threatens your life, will you run or stand up to him?”

“No doubt about it,” I said. “I’ll run.”

“I don’t think so,” The Cardinal smiled. “That’s why I chose you for this. Not because I knew about Wami’s possible involvement but because I sensed situations of this nature might develop, situations which would exhaust a normal man but which one of your resolve and resources might endeavor to surmount.”

“What resolve and resources? I don’t have any.”

“You sell yourself short,” he contradicted me.

He could be an infuriating son of a bitch when he wanted. How can you argue with a man who’s full of praise for you?

“What happens now?” I asked. “I go after Wami, he kills me, you look for a new source of entertainment?”

“Possibly,” The Cardinal nodded. “Though it needn’t pan out that way. I think we should grant Wami the benefit of the doubt. If you approach him diplomatically, you might emerge from the encounter unscathed. Plus, if he is the killer, I won’t demand his head, just proof. If you can pin him to the scene of the crime without confronting him, all the better.”

“If I made a formal request to be transferred—”

“—I’d turn it down.”

I put on a brave front. “And if I quit?”

“Resign from the Troops?” The Cardinal stroked his nose. “That would be… disappointing.”

“Would you punish me?”

“No. I’d wonder how I’d misjudged a man so badly, then dismiss you from my thoughts and leave you to eke out a worthless, shameful excuse of a life.”

“Who gave you the right to pass judgment on me?” I snapped.

“Nobody,” he replied coolly. “I took it.” When I looked away, disgusted, he slid into sympathetic mode. “It’s not me you stand to fail—it’s yourself. Be honest, hasn’t it felt good to be out on your own, following your instincts, homing in on the truth?”

I nodded slowly. “I’ve enjoyed it more than I thought I would.”

“Because this is what you were meant for. Not so much the investigating, rather the use of your mind. You’re one of those rare beings with the power to create your own destiny. I’m trying to free you. That’s not my main motive—the game appeals to me the most—but that’s the true prize for you. All I get out of this is amusement. You can gain
freedom
.”

“You’re the original Good Samaritan, aren’t you?” I chuckled.

“More the genie of the lamp,” he answered earnestly. “I can make dreams come true, but at a price.”

“What’s my price?” I asked.

He shrugged. “That’s the thing—you never know until you wish.”

“If I stick with it,” I spoke my thoughts aloud, “what’s the next step?”

“Locate Paucar Wami. Reconstruct his movements on the night of the murder. Explore his relationship with Miss Hornyak. If you can arrange an audience, it will be easy to ascertain whether he’s guilty or not—Wami does not lie.”

“Never?”

“Not about killing.”

“A killer with an ethical code. Cute.”

“It’s ego, not ethics. He can afford honesty since he lacks fear. He speaks the truth because it can’t hurt him. Those who would seek to use his words against him are easily eliminated.”

“If he killed Nic, and tells me, will he kill me too?”

“If he thinks you’ll become a nuisance… maybe.”

The Cardinal’s honesty was refreshing but unsettling. I decided to meet it with some of my own. “How much cooperation can I expect if I go after him? You’ve been protecting Paucar Wami for decades, keeping his name out of the media, quashing reports, quelling gossip. Are there files on him?”

“None that I care to share. We have an understanding—I keep tabs on him but keep them to myself. In return, he doesn’t kill me.”

“Wami couldn’t get to
you
,” I said.

“Paucar Wami can get to anyone he likes,” The Cardinal replied. “Only the dead are beyond his reach. Any man who thinks differently is a fool, and Mama Dorak raised no fools.” The Cardinal’s real name was Ferdinand Dorak, though he rarely used it.

I hesitated, not wishing to capitulate without the semblance of a struggle. I asked more questions about Wami, which he deflected. He even refused to give me a full description, revealing no more than what I already knew, that Wami was tall, dark, bald and tattooed. I requested photographs, fingerprints, contact names, past addresses—all denied.

Eventually he checked the time and said I had to leave—business couldn’t grind to a halt on my account. He needed a decision. Was I on the case or not?

I should have backed out. I could sense the stakes mounting. Paucar Wami wouldn’t be easy to find or talk to. This was my chance to cut my losses and run. Tuck my tail between my legs and slink out like a skunk.

And I would have, pride be damned, if not for The Cardinal’s raised eyebrows. He
expected
me to quit. Provoked by that look, determined not to gratify the smug son of a bitch, I stuck out my hand, took The Cardinal’s, looked him in the eye and said as pompously as possible, “Mr. Dorak, I’m your man.”

9

I
reported to Party Central first thing Monday morning and spent hours locked away in the vaults of the upper floors, trying to make sense of the phenomenon of Paucar Wami.

He was one of the city’s most vivid yet mysterious legends. I’d heard rumors of his monstrous deeds while growing up and, for a long time, I thought he was a fairy-tale monster. I didn’t believe such an assassin could exist outside of fiction. I wrote him off as a bogeyman and it wasn’t until I joined the Troops that I realized the stories were true—and that I’d only been exposed to a selection of them.

Yet even to the Troops he was a mythical shadow, rarely seen, never openly discussed. New recruits learned by word of mouth never to mess with Wami. If you spotted him lurking around Party Central, you let him pass. If you encountered him on duty, you turned a blind eye. He was the invisible man.

Yet it was only when I went searching for him in the files that I began to understand how low-profile he actually was. He’d been around since the tail end of the seventies, murdering freely. The records should have been bulging with mentions of his name. But there was no trace of him. His name was absent from all the newspapers and police reports that I had access to. No birth certificate. No school statistics. He’d never paid taxes. Wasn’t listed on medical forms. Owned no property. No cars or guns registered to him.

In the course of my investigation I noticed entries that had been tampered with. It wasn’t the first time I’d encountered such reappraisal. The Cardinal liked to write the history of the city his way, regardless of the facts. If that meant altering headlines and articles in the newspaper archives, so be it. If fresh film footage was required to replace clips that contradicted his version of the truth, his technicians—first-class graduates of the film industry—digitally tampered with the originals.

The Cardinal refused to share his personal files on Wami, and as far as the accessible data went, the man was a ghost. After several frustrating hours I abandoned the computers and dusty old files, and went looking for the truth on the streets.

As a Troop, I had all sorts of dubious contacts. I was sure I’d find lots of snitches who’d talk. And I did, but only to a point. Plenty of people were willing to swap Wami tales with me, usually in return for nothing more than a drink. The difficulty was separating reality from invention. Wami had pulled off so many incredible stunts, it was possible to believe anything about him. Normally, if someone spun a yarn about a lone assassin wiping out a twelve-strong Triad faction with his bare hands, I’d dismiss it. But I knew the Triad story was true because I’d been on mopping-up duty that night.

Some of the tales were ludicrous bullshit, those that claimed he moved at superhuman speeds, lifted cars above his head and scaled walls like a spider, breathed fire and disappeared into clouds of smoke, didn’t bleed when cut. But most, far-fetched as they might seem, were plausible.

For all the larger-than-life accounts, I was no wiser at the end of the evening than at the start. I’d learned much about his methods, targets and aliases—he was known by many names, some of which I jotted down to check on later—but nothing about where he came from, what motivated him or how one tracked him down. He had no accomplices. There was no procedure for hiring him. Nobody had a photo of him, an address or a phone number. He seemed to be without relatives, friends or a past.

I put out a few feelers, asking to be notified if he was spotted or if anybody could tell me about his history. Then, having taken the first steps toward locating the famed killer, I decided I’d had enough of Paucar Wami for one day. It was time to explore other angles. Time to talk to the staff at the Skylight.

The manager was out when I arrived but the assistant manager recognized my name from a memo that had been doing the rounds. He placed himself at my disposal and said I’d been cleared to speak to whomever I wished. If anyone refused to cooperate, I was to refer that person to him and he’d sort things out.

I spent the afternoon talking to all the staff I could find. I learned nothing. They hadn’t seen anyone suspicious lurking in the corridors of the eighth floor, and only a lone receptionist remembered seeing Nic the night of her death. Even the Troops who guarded the doors and fire escapes were no help. I hadn’t expected them to be—the brief was different for Troops assigned to the Skylight. At Party Central we were told to suspect everyone and make our suspicions known. Here the Troops were under orders to look away. The Skylight wasn’t a fortress. Guests were supposed to feel at ease.

One person objected to my questioning—Valerie Thomas, the maid who had discovered Nic’s body. She was a big woman, ugly, with a disdainful streak the width of a river. She was doing her chores when I caught up with her and refused to pause. I had to chase her around from room to room while we talked.

“She was dead when you found her?” I asked.

“She wasn’t doing no dancing,” Valerie snorted.

“The coroner put the time of death very close to when the body was found. It’s possible she might have been alive when you entered. Did you check?”

“You know what I did,” she said. “I saw the body and screamed. I didn’t go anywhere near it.”

She didn’t strike me as the screaming kind.

“You’re sure? A lot of people would check for a pulse, or just hang around and stare for a while. If you
did
look at her or touch her, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I opened the door,” she said. “I saw the body. I screamed. I didn’t go near it.”

She could have sung her testimony.

“You saw nothing on the floor or bed?”

“Just the knife.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

“No jewelry, money, anything like that?”

She stopped and stared at me. “Are you accusing me of theft?”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” I hastily assured her. “It’s just, if
I
saw something on the floor, a diamond necklace or a roll of money, and it was lying there, easy pickings, nobody around, I’d—”

“I
saw
nothing,” she snapped. “I
picked up
nothing. I’m clean. Ask the boss. I haven’t stolen a thing, ever, even if a guest has checked out and left it behind. I hand in lost property. You ask. I saw and took
nothing
. You accuse me of theft again, I’ll throw this bucket of water in your face.”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry. But there’s a dead girl involved.”

“I know. I found her.”

I took a deep breath. “Good day, Miss Thomas,” I said, offering my hand, which she ignored. “Thanks for your time.”

“Piss off,” she replied curtly. So I did.

I dropped in to 812 in the course of my rounds. The room where Nic had been butchered was no different from any of the other rooms but it felt colder, emptier. I circled the neatly made bed, imagining Nic bound to it, gagged, struggling, screaming silently as her life was cut out of her. It had been slow, painful, clumsy. It must have been awful.

Could I have saved her if I’d been in town? Had she favored me with her company in return for protection? Did she die cursing me for letting her down? Or was I the furthest thing from her mind, a guy she’d just picked up for sex? I’d probably never know. She was gone now, and all her reasons and answers had gone with her.

The manager, Terry Archer, turned up before I left. I mentioned Valerie Thomas to him and asked if there was anything suspicious about her. He shook his head. “She’s been a foul-tempered bitch since the day she started. Even speaks to
me
that way. But she’s a hard worker. I’ll take a rude workhorse over a polite layabout any day.”

“Might she have taken something from the room?”

“It would be out of character if she did.” We were in Terry’s office. He leaned back in a leather chair and yawned. “Sorry. This murder’s played havoc with my schedule. I spent the weekend shacked up here, dealing with irate policemen, trying to keep the peace between them and the Troops.”

I smiled. We were forever in conflict with the cops. They hated having to play second fiddle to a band of mercenaries. They loved any excuse to barge in and read the riot act.

“Find out anything?” Terry asked.

“No. I thought somebody might have recognized her but…”

“Thousands of customers pass through the Skylight every day,” he sympathized, “and those are only the official guests. More use the restaurant, bars and function rooms. If somebody doesn’t want to be noticed, they aren’t.”

“What did the police make of it?”

“At first they reckoned she’d tagged along with a one-night stand. Then they discovered she was a sometime prostitute. They decided it was a client she’d brought back or met in the hotel.” He didn’t seem too sold on the theory.

“You don’t agree?”

“The Skylight has its share of nightwalkers, like hotels the world over. But it’s a closed shop. Unwanted competition is harshly dealt with. Even an amateur hooker knows better than to bring a trick here.”

“Maybe one of the regular girls took offense and…” He was shaking his head before I finished.

“Some of them are vicious enough, but they wouldn’t do it here. They know better than that. They’d have taken her elsewhere.”

“Perhaps she
was
a regular,” I suggested. “Maybe this wasn’t the first time she used the Skylight. Have you any way of checking?”

Terry reached into a drawer, produced a slim purple file and tossed it across. I opened it to discover a long list of names, both male and female.

“Every hooker’s name is registered,” Terry said. “Even those who only use our rooms once in a blue moon.”

“They let you tag them?” I asked, scanning the names.

“It works to their advantage. Those on the list aren’t troubled by security. Room discounts. The first to be called when a guest requests company.”

“What if one of them—”

I stopped. The file contained close to twenty sheets, not just names, but phone numbers, contacts, sexual specialities, background details, medical histories, even photos. Near the bottom of the sixth sheet, a name jumped out at me.
Priscilla Perdue
.

Terry noticed my pause and leaned over the table, craning his neck. “Priscilla Perdue,” he muttered. “Blond. Very upmarket. Has a thing for women.”

“A thing for women?” I repeated.

“I believe so. It doesn’t say here but I think it’s mostly those of the fairer sex she swings for.”

“Does she use the Skylight often?” I asked.

“Once or twice a month. You always know when she’s around. She blazes in, customer in tow, acting like a movie queen. In fact we’re not sure if she’s a pro or not—word is she doesn’t charge—but we put her on the list all the same.”

“Do you have a photo of her?”

“No, but I can get one.”

“Please.”

I read the profile while Terry had a photo e-mailed across. There was nothing I didn’t already know—height, weight, measurements, place of work. Even the photo, when it came, was familiar, one of the shots from the file in Party Central.

“Mind if I quiz some of your staff again?” I asked.

“Quiz away,” Terry said.

An hour later I left the Skylight in a daze. Plenty of the staff recognized Priscilla from the photo but it was the response of three in particular—a receptionist, a barman and a waitress in the ground-floor bar—that set my head spinning. All ID’d her and then, in answer to my second question, “When did you last see her?” replied—

“Friday before last. She checked in by herself.”

“Friday last week. Ordered a pi≁a colada. Took it to a table in a corner. Nobody with her that I saw.”

“Friday, I think. Not this one—a week further back. I collected her glass after she left. She barely touched it. She was on her own, but I think I recall seeing somebody drop by her table not long before she left.”

Priscilla had been in the Skylight when Nic was killed.